Juvenile Law Commons^™

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Incarcerated Youths In Canada And The United States: A Comparative Analysis, Grace A. Mastrangelo

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Are children, who commit adult crimes, deserving of adult punishments? According to the United Nations, not if it harms their well-being. Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) adopted by the United Nations in November 1989, states that 1) the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration of all state actions involving children, 2) governments must allot children the protection and care necessary for their well-being, and 3) governmental institutions, services, and facilities that deal with children must uphold adequate standards for the safety, health, and supervision of children. The CRC is …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Children's Rights Scholars And Advocates In Support Of Appellants' Opening Brief: Lighthiser V. Trump, Abigail L. Fleming, Douglas A. Ruley, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

For decades, constitutional doctrine has recognized that children possess enforceable constitutional rights and that their developmental, physical, and social differences from adults are important considerations in constitutional analysis. Courts may not impute adult capacities, privileges, or political agency to children when determining whether their rights may be vindicated, leaving them no democratic mechanism to alleviate their injuries.

The district court’s dismissal of the youth plaintiffs’ claims rests on precisely that error. Although the court recognized that the children alleged concrete, severe, and escalating harms caused by the challenged executive actions, it concluded that relief must come from the political branches …

Kidfluencer Protection: Illinois’ Attempt At Expanding Its Version Of The Coogan Law., Genevieve Sloan

American University Business Law Review

On July 1, 2024, Illinois enacted pioneering legislation, which expanded its child labor laws to “[m]inors featured in vlogs.” This legislation marks the first successful attempt at protecting the finances of children in the business of social media influencing. Over the past several years, society has started recognizing the dangers of the otherwise lucrative child influencer industry, notably children’s lack of legal entitlement to their earnings.

Accordingly, the Illinois legislation began inspiring similar child labor laws in other states. This Comment analyzes whether Section 95 and Section 100 of Illinois’ Child Labor Law of 2024 maintain parental autonomy and adequately …

Bad Parenting On Trial: How Gender, Race, And Class Shape Parental Responsibility Prosecutions And Laws For School Shootings, Makayla R. Foust

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2021, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents in the United States to be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection with their son’s school shooting that killed four people and injured multiple others. As school shootings continue to devastate communities across the country, prosecutors are increasingly holding parents criminally liable for their children’s actions. This development raises fundamental questions about justice, accountability, and the limits of criminal liability. While these laws aim to curb gun violence by enforcing parental accountability, they will disproportionately affect marginalized communities, particularly along gender, racial, and socioeconomic lines. As legal precedent expands, …

Chevron Deference, Prospective Gay Parents, And The Need For A Centralized Child Welfare System, Mantas Grigorovicius

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

For over four decades, Chevron deference allowed federal agencies to exercise considerable discretion in interpreting laws, enabling them to implement broad regulatory agendas. This deference was pivotal for administrative agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in shaping public policy. However, in 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn this precedent, shifting power from agencies to courts and potentially reshaping the regulatory landscape. This Article examines the implications of this change within the context of child welfare, focusing on HHS’s role in foster care. As states often rely on taxpayer-funded private child-placing agencies to …

Grown-Ups, Grown-Downs, And Pan-Generationality, In Parents, Children, And The Ripples Of Transitional Justice (Kirsten J. Fisher & Caitlin Mollica Eds., 2026), Mark A. Drumbl

Books and Chapters

Until one becomes a grown-up, one perhaps remains a ‘grown-down’. Indeed, a refrain among concerns that have been raised about demobilization programmes for former child soldiers is that they treat former child soldiers as grown-downs, often even as infants, notwithstanding the experiences of these young people in terms of fighting and foraging and fending and fleecing which, indeed, surpass the kinds of challenges that many grown-ups ever face. In the end, then, as Grace Akello has poignantly demonstrated, many decommissioned child soldiers remain grown-downs who end up going down paths on which they shift from armed conflict to drift into …

Bridging The Gap: Predictors Of Alignment Of Parent And Caseworker Perceptions Of Engagement, Jianchao Lai, Michelle I. Graef

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

This study examined predictors of alignment between parents’ and caseworkers’ perceptions of family engagement in child welfare services. Using data from 2,274 Alternative Response (AR)–eligible families randomized to AR or Traditional Response, engagement was assessed across the domains of Receptivity, Buy-in, Worker-family Relationship, and Mistrust using a modified Yatchmenoff (2005) scale. Multinomial logistic regression models identified factors associated with agreement and discrepancy between ratings of family engagement within the parent and worker dyad. While both parents and workers valued engagement, workers were more likely to provide higher overall engagement ratings, although the direction of discrepancy varied across specific subscales. Greater …

A Zealous Advocate, A Robust Cross: Cross-Examination Of Non-Adverse Witnesses By The Guardian Ad Litem, Scott Swain

BYU Law Review

“When the lives and fundamental rights of children are at stake, there must be no silent witnesses.”1 — Carol Bellamy

Systemic pressures in child welfare litigation regularly lead guardian ad litem attorneys to default to the positions and recommendations of state social services. In such cases, witnesses called by the state in trials and evidentiary hearings are non-adverse to the guardian ad litem. This dynamic undermines the purposes of cross-examination rules, threatening the procedural interests of the parties involved. This paper will use a procedural due process balancing test to guide its analysis as it proposes three potential solutions: a …

Self-Determination Through Children's Rights: Resisting The Paradoxical Pretext Of Parents' Rights Legislation, Jeremiah Chin

Washington Law Review

Washington state law balances the interests of parents and the state in education, healthcare, and the general wellbeing of children. Despite the fact that children are at the center of emerging controversies, children’s rights are rarely discussed in state legislation debating the obligations and relationships between the state of Washington and parents. In education, for example, RCW 28A.605.005 finds “[p]arents are the primary stakeholders in their children’s upbringing.” While this may be true relative to the state, it overlooks the fact that children are the primary actors, agents, and rights bearers in their own personhood. This Article therefore considers ongoing …

Incomplete Protection: How Sijs Perpetuates Family Separation And Restricts Rights Of Immigrant Youth, Lillian Schmoker

Journal of Law and Policy

In 1990, Congress enacted the Immigration Act, amending the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide qualifying young immigrants with a pathway to residency and citizenship. Through the new Act, Congress created Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (“SIJS”) to protect immigrant children in a similar way as the domestic foster care system protected U.S. citizen children. An immigrant child may qualify for SIJS if they are under the age of twenty-one, unmarried, and cannot be reunified with one or both of their parents due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Many SIJS cases involve a claim of harm against only one parent, with …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Living Property, Joseph William Singer

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court has increasingly defined property rights that are per se exempt from regulation in the absence of compensation, most recently in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) and Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023). The Court claims that it can identify property rights that are categorically protected from regulation by reference to history, tradition, and precedent. Yet this approach is oddly ahistorical; it is inconsistent with the fact that property law changed dramatically over U.S. history, as well as varying tremendously among the states. It is also inconsistent with the historical context of the Founding era. At that time, …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Roots Of Credit Inequality, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

Debt oppression began before the United States became a country. Settlers enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, treating them as property that they could buy and sell for their economic and personal benefit. When enslavement became illegal, new economic systems and laws that included sharecropping, Black Codes, and Jim Crow kept Black people in servitude. Laws that prohibited enslaved people from owning property or selling goods to white people evolved into restrictions on Black people’s occupations and market participation, both formal and informal. When Black entrepreneurs overcame these obstacles and built wealth within Black business enclaves, white people enforced their racist …

“A Plain Denial”: Reclaiming Equal Protection In American Juvenile Law, Addie C. Rolnick, David S. Tanenhaus, Justin Iverson, Danielle L. Silvestri

Seattle University Law Review

Juvenile courts are based on the premise that children are different from adults and should therefore be treated differently. Children may be treated more informally by courts, punished for different purposes, and brought before the court for different behaviors. Since In re Gault, the Supreme Court has been clear that there are limits to how different juvenile courts can be. Juveniles are entitled to many of the same procedural protections as adult criminal defendants, although the Court has preserved some procedural differences where it has determined that their benefit is outweighed by the need to preserve the informality, flexibility, …

Mandating Fluoride: A Constitutional Exercise Of Police Power, Anita Jahangiri

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses the ongoing debate over fluoridation: the regulation of fluoride levels in public water systems. Extensive research indicates fluoridation, when regulated at the recommended concentration, is both safe and highly effective in preventing dental caries. Better known as cavities, dental caries is a preventable yet widespread health issue that disproportionately affects low-income populations. Reducing dental health disparities among economic classes is a pressing public health issue. Fluoridation is not merely a policy option, but a critical, proven tool to address such disparities and uphold the collective welfare of Washingtonians. This Note focuses on fluoridation as a public health …

Neurodiversity In The Courtroom: Expanding Jury Service Accessibility Beyond Physical Disability, Samantha L. Mabe

Seattle University Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act has required equal access to jury service for decades; however, efforts to accommodate jurors with disabilities have been slow to develop beyond some minor accommodations for physical disabilities. While neurodivergent people frequently struggle to navigate a world catered toward neurotypical people, jury service remains inaccessible for many neurodivergent people who need accommodations to attend trial and engage in jury deliberations. If courts and advocates do not consider how to develop accommodations to secure the service of neurodivergent jurors, they will miss out on the unique skillsets that neurodivergent people can bring to resolving disputes.

Disabled …

Redefining Section 230 Immunity, Lucas Dini

Seattle University Law Review

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has provided broad immunity to online platforms for third-party content which was the foundation for the internet's growth. However, the rise in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to produce algorithms to curate content to users of online services has blurred the line between being a passive host of third party content and active editorial control. This Note examines the legal, policy, and constitutional implications of applying Section 230 immunity to platforms that use AI to curate and promote third-party content. This analysis argues that algorithmic promotion of third-party content constitutes a platform's …